What’s next for the future of gaming? To find out, Dona Sarkar
chats with Joe Neate, Executive Producer of the hit pirate
adventure, Sea of Thieves. Joe talks about major gaming trends that
are influencing Sea of Thieves and the expansion of the game’s rich
storylines. Next, we explore the growing popularity of game
streaming by chatting with Microsoft’s Mixer team. Marketing
director Jenn McCoy and engineer Chad Gibson discuss how the Mixer
platform is sparking new experiences in gameplay and innovations in
game design. Finally, we catch up with Windows Insiders at E3 and
get their impressions on what’s most exciting about the future of
gaming.

This episode, we'll be chatting about exciting trends hitting
the gaming universe -- namely, gaming as a service, and interactive
live streaming with Mixer.

First up, Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider Program, sits
down with Joe Neate, executive producer at Rare. Rare is the
game developer behind Sea of Thieves, the multi-player
pirate adventure that has taken Xbox and Windows 10 by storm.
Here's Dona and Joe.

(Music.)

(Sea of Thieves pirate audio clip.) The life of a
pirate is fraught with danger. For you see, to journey out onto the
waves is to take a step into the unknown. There are things that
have lived there and rulled there far longer than us. Great terrors
from the deep. Some I’ve seen with my own eye.

DONA SARKAR: Hello, again,
Insiders! I'm Dona Sarkar, head of the Windows Insider
Program. And you just heard a snippet from one of the new
content trailers for Sea of Thieves. Here to talk
about Sea of Thieves and new trends in the gaming universe
is a very special guest -- Joe, welcome to the show. Could
you start by introducing yourself to our audience and sharing a few
words about what you do?

JOE NEATE: Yes. So I'm Joe Neate,
and I'm the executive producer on Sea of Thieves.
Ultimately, I've been involved in the project from the very start
from when it was kind of just Post-Its on a whiteboard figuring out
what was next for Rare, through to what it is now. Yeah,
ultimately, responsible for vision and maintaining the vision and
delivery and now running and operating, growing it as a
service.

DONA SARKAR: That's amazing. I want
to ask you all about the latest Sea of Thieves news -- our
Insiders definitely want to know. But first, can you please
share what it's like to be the executive producer at a gam dev
company like Rare, being the chief wrangler and all?

JOE NEATE: It's an amazing
responsibility. So to have that responsibility of coming up
with what is next for a studio like Rare. You know, Rare has
been in the gaming industry for 32 years now, which is pretty much
since the games industry began, and they've done so many different
games. And so to have that opportunity to sit down and look
at the kind of emerging trends in the industry, to see where player
tastes are going and figure out what you think is going to be the
place you should take gaming and you should take players with you
is an incredible feeling.

Even just the different stages of game development from when
you've just got the idea through to kind of pitching it to
prototyping to getting into the real production of it, and then
starting to build a community and bring fans in and then get people
playing it and go through all of that, and then eventually get to
launch and have an incredible launch.

And now we're in this place where we've got this game out there,
we've got this huge community, and now we just want to grow and
build on top of it. I'm very privileged to have the job that
I have and to get to do what I do every day.

DONA SARKAR: That is amazing. So
for the very few, small number of people in our audience who are
not yet familiar with Sea of Thieves, can you give us a
quick rundown of what the game is all about?

JOE NEATE: Yeah. Absolutely.
So when we set out at the start, we wanted to create what we called
a "shared-world adventure game." The acronym for that is
SWAG, which we're particularly happy with for a pirate game, but we
love our acronyms at Microsoft, right?

It's really about putting people into this shared-world,
multi-player game where you're off on your own kind of pirate
adventures, doing what you want to do in a pirate world from, you
know, maybe you've grown up reading Treasure Island or you
watch The Goonies or you love Pirates of the
Caribbean, or anything like that.

And whenever you see a set of sails on the horizon, or you
encounter another pirate on an island, that's going to be someone
else. And they're going to be on their own adventure doing
their own things, too. And the collision of those adventures,
the encounters you have with other players out there are going to
play out in different and unexpected ways every time, just like if
you were, you know, a pirate out adventuring on the open sea.
And that's the world we wanted to create, where every time you
play, the adventure is different, the encounters are different, and
you're going to have these really memorable moments and stories
that you want to tell your friends or you want to share and you
want to stream it on Mixer or on Twitch, or you want to just go and
post it on Twitter or on Reddit or wherever.

And that's what we've created. We wanted to create a world
where every adventure would be different, and we can put all these
ingredients in. And as we grow and evolve it, we'll just keep
doing that. We'll keep adding new ingredients for players to
play with, leading to just richer and richer moments and
stories.

DONA SARKAR: That is amazing. One
of the key ingredients, as you said, is multi-player. Now,
gamers are pretty familiar with multi-player format since the good
old days of Counter-Strike, World of Warcraft, et
cetera. And multi-player continues to be a big favorite among
the gaming community.

In our view, what is game-changing -- ha -- about Sea of
Thieves?

JOE NEATE: I think a lot of multi-player
can be very competitive and directly competitive. You know,
you listed Counter-Strike there, and if you were to go on
Mixer or Twitch, you'd be looking at Fortnight and
PUBG and all of those games out there now.

What we've tried to create is a game where we call it the "fun
and welcoming" multi-player experience. Where maybe you
haven't really got into multi-player before because you're not an
overly competitive player, you don't like that high kind of ceiling
or barrier to entry, or maybe you've experienced toxicity or
negativity in a multi-player environment before.

We tried to create a game that encourages different online
interactions and encounters between players. There's an
emphasis on cooperation in crews, but also if you encounter other
crews, you can have those moments, too. And, yes, there's
room for competition in a pirate game, but we've tried to do it in
a way that's tonally right, that doesn't encourage real competitive
multi-player. And so we've just tried to create something
that appeals to a wider group of people than perhaps are just
playing multi-player now and scratches different kind of
motivational itches, I guess.

That's always been our goal. And, again, as we grow and
evolve it, we want to keep doing that. We always want to
encourage different player encounters, different stories, so that
you can have really memorable multi-player moments in the right way
from encountering other players.

DONA SARKAR: That fits me exactly because
I'm inherently not competitive, so that idea of like a
collaborative multi-player sounds super interesting.

So, can you break down this gaming-as-a-service thing that you
guys are adopting and working on -- or a service-based game, as
some people say? How is it different than a boxed game that
releases an expansion pack every once in a while?

JOE NEATE: We built our game form the
ground up with the goal of basically updating and growing and
adding content to it as far into the future as we can see, you
know, as far as people will be playing and updating it.

For us, that means there's always -- we launched just over two
months ago, right? And had a fantastic launch, loads of
people come in, like overwhelmingly large amounts of players coming
in that far exceeded all of our expectations and numbers.
Which led to the first couple of weeks, we were stabilizing and
making sure everything was working as expected. You know, the
amount of concurrent players and users we had exceeded any scale
tests we'd done up to launch.

But we want to really swiftly kind of get through that phase and
get into the position where we're updating the game on a weekly
basis. So we run quite a lot of automated testing internally
when we're writing features and entering stuff into the game.
We try and test it as we go to try and not build up loads of
technical debt.

And it means we have a decent degree of understanding when we're
releasing features that the game's going to stay live, it's going
to stay working. But we've always wanted to basically have an
ability to react to our players, to update, to release new content,
new cosmetics, new stuff, but also whenever you play the game, we
always just want there to be new things to return to.

So we've just released our first content update called The
Hungering Deep. And this is where we've released this
new AI threat, this megalodon into this world, so this giant shark
that's now out there. Players have to kind of hunt it down,
work together to take down this threat and earn these rewards
around it.

But beyond that, we then want to move into weekly events.
So every week, we're going to be introducing something cool that's
new to players, like there's a new goal with a new set of rewards,
a new way the play, and really, it's about keeping players engaged
with your game for as long as possible and as regularly as possible
because players nowadays love to keep playing in that same world
and in that same kind of social space with their friends, or
friends they've made playing that game. And they love to
embrace this and play for years. Right? We see this
with a lot of games now.

And so I think it's our responsibility to keep bringing new
players to the Sea of Thieves, but also to give players
that have played it as many reasons to return and to keep playing
it because that's how player behavior has gone with whichever game
it is that's out there now -- PUBG or Fortnight
or League of Legends or World of Warcraft -- many
different things.

But we've set ourselves up to be able to keep delivering new
things, to keep listening to what players are saying, and also
change our plan. We want to be very reactive based on what
feedback is coming in, what telemetry is telling us, and what other
things players are liking the most, what things that they want to
see more of.

I think that kind of direct communication with your community in
terms of listening to feedback, updating them to what you're doing
is a super important part of the games as a service because if you
just go dark or go quiet and don't talk to your players, don't let
them know that you're listening, don't let them know what you're
doing next, don't let them know that you're listening to their
feedback and you're hearing it, they won't stay connected and
they'll start mistrusting you and everything.

We're trying to deliver a game that players love and that
players want to keep playing for years, ultimately, but that's a
big "ask" from us to our players. And so I think there's a
big responsibility for us as a studio and as a development team to
be very open and transparent, to let people know what we're doing,
why we're doing it, what we're making decisions and that we're in
this for the long haul and that we're very respectful of the
feedback and opinions they have. That's been a big part of
our strategy prior to launch with our Insider program that we have
for Sea of Thieves, and then post launch as well, we're
behaving very much the same.

DONA SARKAR: So you're very much
co-creating with your Insiders, the game, what they're looking for,
et cetera, et cetera?

JOE NEATE: Yes.

DONA SARKAR: That's awesome. As you
know, Windows Insider Program is all about getting users involved
in the evolution of Windows, and I love hearing that Rare has its
own Insider program where you do something similar, and your fans
have had a heavy hand in this gaming-as-a-service thing that you
guys are doing, which is fabulous.

So, Sea of Thieves is gorgeous. I am bad at
playing it, but I like to watch people play. So this is where
Mixer is really useful for me, because I think it's beautiful and
absorbing both in terms of visuals and the stories. And for
people like me, how is the trend of live streaming games, such as
on Mixer and such, factored into the design of Sea of
Thieves? Because I recently learned that the number of
people watching people play games has surpassed the number of
people actually playing games. I find that fascinating and
wonder how it affects your design plans.

JOE NEATE: Yeah. So we conceived
Sea of Thieves about four years ago now in terms of just
coming up with the idea, coming up with what we want it to
be. And before it was even a pirate game, and way before it
was called Sea of Thieves, the original pitch slides was
called Players Creating Stories Together. And we always
envisioned a game that because you give players this shared world,
because you kind of give them control over their own goals and you
give them a bunch of emergent tools, and those encounters with
other players, in a world where there's some cooperation, some
competition, would lead to really interesting stories which are
naturally going to be watchable and shareable.

So it, inherently, was built into the game's design from the
very start. And, you know, we were watching games like
DayZ back in the day, like even a big science fiction
space opera. There were really interesting stories emerging
from them, whether it was on YouTube at the time because Twitch had
only really started up and Mixer wasn't even a thing then.

But we saw this avenue of -- this was the way that we thought
games were going, that the more emergence and control that you let
go of, and as game creators, it's quite hard to relinquish control,
right, and hand it to our players, because you naturally want to
create this crafted experience where everyone has this perfect
story or moment or thing that you've designed, whereas we now hand
control of the game to our players, and we give them some goals and
there are things to go and achieve.

But also the thing that we're most excited about and the thing
that we love the most is whenever there's an unexpected story or a
moment that we didn't predict from the different tools we've given
players. And so it's been inherent in the design from the get
go from two perspectives, from a cold, hard, business and strategic
perspective, we made a really good choice because of the way that
the games industry has taken off in that way over the last four
years.

But from a richness of watching, and like I say, every adventure
being different, it kind of depends who you're watching and what
they're up to and what players they encounter or what things happen
to them in the world, that's what makes it so watchable, because
you never know what's going to happen, right? Everyone's
adventure is different. It's not like everyone's playing to
the same story. You get to see their reactions to it, but
once you've seen it once, you're done. But you can watch
Sea of Thieves with any players, anybody, and it's going
to be different each time based on their reactions, based on their
personality because they get to put their personality into the
stream, into the session that they're broadcasting.

DONA SARKAR: I love watching gamers
because they're all so different, and tremendously entertaining to
watch, especially if they're streaming on Mixer.

So I'm sure, like me, you're about to head into E3 and the
pandemonium that comes with it, but this podcast won't air until
after E3's done. Are there any updates on Sea of
Thieves that you'd like to give us a sneak peek of?

JOE NEATE: At E3, itself, we're going to
turn up with another little teaser trailer and what this is showing
is kind of a glimpse into what's coming in Cursed Sails
and The Forsaken Shores, which are our next two content
updates beyond The Hungering Deep, which has just come out
prior to E3.

So in Cursed Sails, we're introducing a new AI threat
into the world that you're going to get a glimpse of, and it's
quite fantastical in the trailer itself, and it's something that
we've never really let our players know is coming, so that's going
to be fun.

And then The Forsaken Shores is actually a new part of
the world that's much more perilous, much more volcanic, so there's
going to be a really interesting, more dangerous part of the world
to adventure into and explore for players. And both of those
are coming during the summer.

DONA SARKAR:The Forsaken
Shores, I'm going to name my office that, that sounds
amazing. Yeah. That sounds pretty cool.
Awesome. Well, we're about out of time. Thank you so
much for being here, Joe. I really, really appreciate your
time. And be more pirate. Thank you.

JOE NEATE: Yes. Thank you very
much. Cheers.

(Music.)

JASON HOWARD: As Dona mentioned, game
streaming is becoming extremely popular with more people today
watching games that be playing them. Gaming broadcasts can
command massive audiences. As this trend continues to
develop, it's becoming clear that game streaming isn't limited to
being a spectator sport.

Platforms like Mixer are unleashing new interactive features
that enable viewers to participate alongside streamers, including
participation in live game play. With Mixer recently
celebrating its one-year anniversary, we have Microsoft engineers
from the Mixer team here in the studio to chat about the future of
game streaming.

(Music.)

JASON HOWARD: Hi, Jenn and Chad, welcome
to the show. Could you each introduce yourselves to our
audience?

JENN MCCOY: Sure. I'm Jenn McCoy, I
lead marketing for Mixer.

CHAD GIBSON: And my name's Chad Gibson,
and I'm the general manager of Mixer.

JASON HOWARD: Welcome aboard.

JENN MCCOY: Thanks.

JASON HOWARD: So I've go to ask you real
quick. Obviously, you know, gaming is a big thing here at
Microsoft and, you know, of course across the world, right?
Who is your game character alter ego and why do you think they
are?

JENN MCCOY: Usually I play RPGs where I
get to make my alter character me.

JASON HOWARD: Oh, okay.

JENN MCCOY: Yeah.

JASON HOWARD: So you make your own self
yourself?

JENN MCCOY: A little bit. Maybe a
little taller. (Laughter.)

CHAD GIBSON: I'm usually a support
player. Like in most games I play, I usually support or
heal. So maybe like Lucio from Overwatch, I like him
a lot. He's pretty cool because he makes people either faster
or he helps them heal. That resonates with me really
well.

JASON HOWARD: Immediately having
flashbacks to the Medic in Team Fortress 2.

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah, Medic as
well.

JASON HOWARD: I was always a heavy
because, well, you know? It's just always fun that
way.

CHAD GIBSON: Playing Tank is fun, playing
Tank is a lot of fun, too. (Laughter.)

JASON HOWARD: So for those who are
unfamiliar with Mixer, could you briefly summarize what Mixer is,
what the platform represents?

JENN MCCOY: Yeah. Mixer is
Microsoft's next-generation live streaming service where we really
seek to blur the lines between what it means to watch and to
play. Chad, do you want to talk a little bit about how we do
that?

CHAD GIBSON: Sure. Yeah. We
really want to help streamers interact with their audience
more. So we have our streaming technology called Faster Than
Light, which allows us to stream with milliseconds of delay between
the streamer and their audience. So anything the audience is
saying, the streamer can pick up on that really quick and it helps
the two really interact more.

Low latency also enables interactivity, where we have a bunch of
experiences where viewers can do anything from trigger sound
effects or actually manipulate the game they're watching someone
play. It really helps make the audience a member of the game
and a part of the game and bring them closer with the
broadcaster.

And we have a bunch of other features we do as well that really
help deliver new and unique streaming experiences, like
co-streaming, where a bunch of users can kind of stream together,
play the game together, tell the story of their campaign, of their
team, or whatever fun story they want to tell.

JASON HOWARD: Awesome. So real
quick, because I don't want to forget this part, because this is
actually kind of important, Mixer just celebrated its one-year
anniversary.

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah.

JASON HOWARD: So, congratulations,
right?

JENN MCCOY: Thank you.

JASON HOWARD: And you guys have
definitely come a long way, some of the numbers that have been kind
of passed around, it's like the user base has quadrupled, if I
understand that correctly?

JENN MCCOY: Yes. So we announced
back in December that we exceeded 10 million monthly active users
for the first time. And then Phil, on Sunday, announced that
Mixer's grown to more than 20 million monthly active
users.

JASON HOWARD: Oh, my goodness.

JENN MCCOY: So doubling in the past six
months. It's just been incredible to see how much the
community and the streamers and our viewers have supported the
growth of the service.

JASON HOWARD: All right. So how do
you interpret this huge upswing, right? Obviously, with the
trend of game streaming in general, as well as the success of the
Mixer platform itself? Like, what's driving this?

JENN MCCOY: As you said, there's a lot of
growth in the industry overall. More and more people are
spending time watching game play and connecting with streamers, and
then we've been very fortunate to have a number of amazing
streamers and content creators come to the platform, really focused
on growing their audience and helping be ambassadors for Mixer,
helping spread the word of our really positive and welcoming
community, some of the unique features that we bring, and some of
the fun content that our team's putting together.

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah, one of the things that
surprised us probably the most dramatically about maybe a little
over a year ago, when we started bringing native broadcasting into
Windows and Xbox One, we had high hopes for that feature, but it's
far surpassed all of our expectations. We made it really easy
to share and stream to Mixer, and that resonated with way more
people than we thought. And when those people started
streaming on Mixer, you know, they started engaging with the
community and started feeling welcomed and engaging more with the
community and enjoying the community. And that number of
users who are native broadcasting has been growing
phenomenally. Like, that's probably the one growth curve and
chart that is just blowing our minds.

And that enabled things like the Hype Zone, where we can allow
all those people who are streaming PUBG or
Fortnight or Rainbow 6 or Realm Royale
to you know showcase one of those many people are about to win and
deliver a nice audience to them. And it's another great way
to discover new streamers.

JENN MCCOY: Yeah. Hyper Zone's been
incredible for exactly what you say, that you can see streamers of
all size, and they just have a couple of years and they have
thousands of viewers, but they get in the Hype Zone and have
everybody watching on the Hype Zone channel drop in and watch their
moment victory or defeat, depending on how things go.
Sometimes there is the Hype Zone curse that rears its ugly head,
but it's kind of fun.

CHAD GIBSON: So you're streaming with
your friends, you're playing PUBG or Fortnight
and you're doing well and all of a sudden, you're about to win and
then you have, you know, 500 or 1,000 viewers all of a sudden
watching you and hyping you up.

JENN MCCOY: Pressure!

CHAD GIBSON: The pressure, like, "I'm in
the Hype Zone." And you want to win, you want to show a
victory for all those people, but sometimes the pressure can be too
much.

JASON HOWARD: I'm going to do a shameless
self-pitch here. We, on the Windows Insider Program, we
actually use Mixer. We have our webcast series where we bring
on engineers and people from other teams. It's amazing to see
how quickly we say something and then just even watching on the
stream, coming from a separate computer, right? So we're
watching the chat and everything. To see how quickly it shows
up and then people's reactions.

And there's no other platform that I've tested, seen, watched,
anything that does it that quickly and that seamlessly. It's
amazing. It's been beautiful to use, and I can tell just over
the past year how much work has been put into the platform to not
only keep it stable from where it was when Microsoft acquired what
used to be Beam, but to where it's grown to now, seeing all this
hard work is just amazing.

JENN MCCOY: And that's really a big
focus, exactly what you talk about -- the viewers being able to
participate and be a natural part of the conversation. We
don't want live streaming to just be a one-way experience, we want
the viewers to be able to come in and participate and have an
impact on the stream, have an impact with each other and have a
real connection with the streamer.

JASON HOWARD: So as part of this
anniversary that you've hit and some of the other milestones,
obviously, there's a lot of changes that are coming to the
platform. Like, what are some of the things you're excited
about that you're introducing to the platform or that you have
recently brought forward for users to use or streamers to take part
in and actually engage with?

CHAD GIBSON: During the one-year
celebration, we announced our UI refresh, which is in some private
branches right now, and I was just playing with that this
morning. It's really exciting. It's exciting for a
couple reasons. It allows us to showcase some unique Mixer
channels, such as the Hype Zones, it also provides more ways to
discover more content, more ways to get to browse filters.
There's a bunch of really fun ways to, you know, I want to watch a
co-stream, I want to watch an interactive stream, I want to watch a
stream in my language. We made a bunch of those features
super easy for people to find content, and it's a more polished
version of Mixer.

And so that should be going out soon-ish. The feature
bench is looking great, and that's something that's going to be a
great improvement for everyone on Mixer.

JENN MCCOY: And Mixer Pro subscribers can
actually check it out early and give us feedback on it before we
release it to the general public.

CHAD GIBSON: Yes. They have been
giving us a lot of great feedback, and it's getting better
quickly.

JASON HOWARD: I've got to admit, you
know, obviously, doing what I do, preview programs hold a special
place in my heart.

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah. (Laughter.)

JENN MCCOY: We also announced a new Hype
Zone. So we announced the Hype Zone for Rainbow Six
Siege, it was the first time that we went beyond the battle
royale genre to be able to bring the Hype Zone experience to just a
very different type of game play. And it's been really fun to see,
you know, overtime matches and really close matches come to life in
the Rainbow Six Hype Zone.

JASON HOWARD: Yeah, and then, of course,
with some of the more recent announcements at E3, I'm sure -- I'm
not going to ask you to say what you have up your sleeve, but I'm
sure you're probably working on something, because there's some
really awesome content coming both from Microsoft being first
party, as well as some of the third-party developers who, you know,
produce games for our platforms, both for Xbox as well as PC and
then of course beyond that. There's some really cool stuff
coming.

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah. We've done a lot
of, I would say, experimental experiences that really blur the line
between is it a game, is it a show? And there's a bunch of
that stuff coming. I'm really excited about that.

We had some of those developers on our stage, I believe, like we
have a new Death's Door coming, which is a game that's
only played via the Mixer channel, and that I think is coming at
the end of June. But that whole area of really trying to
create and deliver a new medium, we have a bunch of those types of
experiences coming all this summer.

JASON HOWARD: So something interesting,
for me, one of my good friends, he has a young son who is really,
really into Minecraft. But he wasn't about playing Minecraft
himself, he was really into watching other people play
Minecraft. So he would sit there and endlessly watch hours
upon hours of YouTube videos to get ideas and see what other people
were doing, what they were creating, the worlds they were exploring
and playing in.

And for me, I was like, why? Why wouldn't he want to be in
there participating in the game, doing it himself, having that
experience?

But I have to say, after our team having done streaming on the
platform, and then of course to learn more about the platform, you
know you just get in and explore, right? So there are groups
of people that I follow, games that I enjoy watching, you know,
just the interaction. It set a very different perspective for
me. I still don't want to go watch hours of videos on
YouTube, right? For those that do, hey, great, right?
Gives them ideas and, you know, some jumping-off points.

But watching somebody immersed in the game real time, and
feeling like you're there with them and being able to talk to them
as, you know, they're listening on their headphones and they've got
the game pumping and music going, right? They're watching the
chat and having some of that interaction. It's a very
different experience than just sitting there watching some static
video content on YouTube or any other platform that they may be
viewing it on.

So that kind of leads me to what I want to ask you next.
With Mixplay and some of those new interactive opportunities,
developers can build different types of interactions into their
games. Can you talk a bit about this trend of interactive
streaming concepts? What does it mean to interact with a live
game? And can you give us some discussions about that type of
experience?

JENN MCCOY: Yeah. I mean, we're at
a really interesting point in the gaming industry where I think the
traditional definition of a player is changing. And we even
hear it from a lot of our particularly younger audiences that their
belief is they've played the game, even if what they've really done
is watched somebody else play it. But as you say, like you're
viewing and actually feeling like an active part of it.

And that's the core of what Mixer and Mixplay is all about is
having the viewing audience feel like they are just as much a part
of the gameplay experience as the person who's actually hands on
controller or hands on the keyboard.

A couple of the great examples that we've seen, actually,
there's a really fun one that was created internally -- Mixer Mini
Golf -- where you have hundreds and hundreds of people competing in
this fun mini golf experience, trying to see who gets the lowest
score. If you get the lowest score, you then get to create
the course for the next round.

And it's just really fun. If you think about, mini golf
doesn't sound like a multi-player or community experience, but when
you've got lots of little mini golf balls running all over the
place, like, it's just fun, it's entertaining, and it's a different
take on what you would think of as live streaming.

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah, I agree. And one
of my favorite examples is a game Hello Neighbor that
launched -- I think it was earlier this year. And Hello
Neighbor is a game built by tinyBuild, and the goal is to
basically go into your neighbor's house, steal things, take things
without them seeing you. And tinyBuild provided this mechanic
where the viewers can actually alert the neighbor, which you do not
want the neighbor to know you're there.

So people who are playing this game, not only do they need to,
like, figure out how to, like, sneak into the neighbor's house, but
now they need to do so while knowing their viewing audience may,
you know --

JASON HOWARD: Is going to rat them
out.

CHAD GIBSON: -- tip them off, yeah, at
any moment. So it created this whole new game mechanic.
And some creators, it frustrated them; but some, it was such a
fascinating next-level game play.

One of the things I think that we really strive for is a world
where every game is built where the viewing audience is part of the
game. That's a really deep and challenging concept, which is
why we're doing a bunch of different things on that journey to show
what is really meaningful, what can engage the viewers without
adjusting the game play in an unfair way, and that's where I think
there's a lot of excitement in the months to come.

JASON HOWARD: And the gamers, themselves,
obviously, they have different options they can choose on how they
want to represent what they're doing to their watching audience,
right? You know, they can change some of like the floating
boxes and I've seen, you know, animations drop across the stream,
and of course there's the concept of subscribing to a
channel. And when that happens, you know, the balloons and
the confetti drops across the screen, right? It's a really
good way to kind of co-celebrate both with the other people
watching as well as the person who's actually doing the
gaming.

There are some of those personal connections that get built for
people that live on one side of the world versus another, or people
who don't necessarily tend to get out and interact, but this gives
them a way to kind of be social within a level that fits their
comfort, so they don't have to go out and try to force themselves
to be somebody that they're not.

JENN MCCOY: Yeah. They're part of a
community. They have a connection, streamer and audience, or
even within the audience. People are getting to know each
other, regular names that they see showing up in chat or
interacting with the different buttons.

JASON HOWARD: I will say, at E3 I saw a
few of the streamers who I've, you know, interacted with and
watched in the past, and walking up and you can see there's that
little question or look on your face, you'll be, like, "Do I
recognize you?" Because for me, you know, the beard's pretty
recognizable, and so that's just a photo of me as my avatar.
So I've got that little head-tilt look. And I'm like, "Yes, I
am @NorthFaceHiker."

JENN MCCOY: It is me.

JASON HOWARD: And they're, like, "Oh,
hey!" And then, you know, you just kind of kick off that
conversation. It's nice to meet people, you know, in person
after that.

JENN MCCOY: And there's a lot of creative
things that our streamers have done with Mixplay, all the way from
the visual or audio effects that the audience can implement, but
we've had people use Mixplay for physical environmental things,
too.

So, for example, having the audience change the lighting in the
studio from red to blue to green, we have one gentleman, Sorry
About Your Cats, who lets the audience actually control mini robots
using the Mixplay technology. So during his stream, the
audience is actually controlling robots in the background on the
stream.

We've had people use it to control different camera
angles. The whole idea is it's a tool set that the content
creators can use to create the experience that fits with them,
whether that's digital, physical, or actually getting into the game
play itself.

JASON HOWARD: So the whole concept of
sparks on the Mixer platform, right? Where the longer you
view, you start gaining Sparks. And then that's kind of like
the avenue to some of these interactions and clicking some of the
buttons and things like that. Have you all thought about
monetizing that at all?

CHAD GIBSON: Absolutely.
(Laughter.) I think the thing that we're really motivated by
is allowing viewers to support the creators and streamers, really
supporting patronage, supporting ways for communities to get
built. And for many of these streamers, it's their full-time
job. And we love lots of investments in the area that allow
the viewers to better support the communities they join, and so
Sparks is a great potential area for that to go further.

JENN MCCOY: One of the other programs
that we implemented pretty recently is this idea of Mixer direct
purchase, where a streamer can actually showcase a game or DLC that
they're playing, and let the community purchase directly through
their channel, and then the streamer gets a portion of that
revenue. So it's a way that the viewing audience, again, can
support the streamer with their purchase, but then also they get to
benefit from the streamer doing a great job of showcasing, hey,
here's this new game or new DLC that you should check out.

JASON HOWARD: Sounds like this whole
platform has gone from, "Hey, I just want to see if other people
want to watch me playing a video game," to an entire new world that
people are stepping into now.

So I've got to ask you, and this is going to be a tough
question, so get ready for it. Obviously, there's a huge user
base, and Mixer is one of several platforms out there. It's
one of the most recognizable, which is something I'm very happy for
being, you know, a Microsoft employee and whatnot.

JENN MCCOY: Oh, you're saying the
branding is really good?

JASON HOWARD: You know, you might be
doing your job well. (Laughter.) So here's the tough
question: What, in your mind, sets Mixer apart from some of
the other well-known platforms, such as Twitch?

JENN MCCOY: Yeah. There's actually
two big things to me that are really differentiators of Mixer
versus any other platform. The first is our community.
We are just super fortunate to have an amazing community that's
very welcoming, very positive, very self-reinforcing. If you
have someone that shows up in a channel that's maybe being a little
troll-like, it's amazing to see the community react to that and
just be, like, "Hey, that's not what we're about. That's not
what we do."

Similarly, if you have someone new that's saying, "Hey, I'm a
Mixer for the first time," the community really rallies around and
says, "Oh, hey, let me show you how you do this," or, "Welcome, you
know, so and so, to Mixer," giving them tips, that type of
thing. And it's something Matt and James really invested in
when they first founded the company, and it's continued and has
pervaded the entire sense of Mixer since then. So community
is, by far, the biggest differentiator for us.

And then the second is this idea of really blurring the lines
between watching and playing. And so the investments that
we've made with Mixplay, the investments that we've made with Hype
Zone and some of the other technologies to bring viewers into the
experience in a way that you just don't see on any other
platform.

CHAD GIBSON: I agree with Jenn. The
community is probably the number-one difference between us and
other platforms. It's positive on so many dimensions, and
it's really interesting and fun talking to creators who have
streamed on YouTube, Facebook, or Twitch and hearing about their
first-week experience and, like, they knew that community was a big
part of Mixer, but then when they feel it and they experience it
themselves, it's really fun to hear about those positive
experiences. So I totally agree that that is one of the
biggest differences.

The other one, it's probably a combination of a lot of the
things we're trying to do differently. A lot of our features
have been super unique, like co-streaming was a very unique
feature. The fact that we're trying to deliver video in such
a very different way with FTL and our Mixplay experiences and Hype
Zone, like, we really want to create new and unique and very
interesting things. And I think that desire to explore new
territory also resonates really positively with a lot of
people.

JASON HOWARD: So I'm going to level-up
for just a moment. Obviously, you know, with E3 being wrapped
up at this point, there was a lot of announcements that came out of
it between changes that are coming to consoles and platforms, a
bunch of the games. Looking specifically at the trends in
game streaming, obviously both of you are very well connected into
this, is there anything besides what you're working on that you see
kind of coming forward in the next month, six months, a year,
whether it came from E3 or if it's just a general trend that you're
seeing developing in this particular space?

JENN MCCOY: The thing that stands out to
me the most is the agility of game developers and how they're using
live streaming to really get real-time reactions from their
players, from their audience, and use that to adjust the
game.

The best example I can give you is Fortnight,
right? I think Epic has just done a tremendous job of really
thinking about Fortnight as a service and being very on it
just with feedback from the community, making new experiences, new
content, and that I think is where we just are going to see more
and more games going, of being super agile and super two-way
experiences between the game developer and the community.

CHAD GIBSON: I agree with that. One
thing I would add is prior to the Beam acquisition, we gained our
opinion of the game video industry, and how we thought it was going
to grow and where we thought there were opportunities. And
this E3, to me, made me believe that our previous estimates were
maybe a little conservative.

I think the game video industry, the way it's expanding in so
many different ways, across the world in different countries, it's
expanding in new capabilities, we're seeing games just leverage it
more and more and more where I think there's so much more to
come.

And so I think the growth of the overall game video segment or
industry is growing faster than we certainly thought two years
ago. That was made apparent to me this last E3.

JASON HOWARD: That's kind of a good
problem to have.

CHAD GIBSON: It is. It is.
And it's a great problem to have. I mean, it's a huge market,
and it's growing, and we can achieve all of our goals by just doing
our thing.

JASON HOWARD: Somebody can throw out
something enticing to get an old dog like me back into playing
video games. Hey, somebody's doing something right.

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah.

JASON HOWARD: All right, one more really
fun question for you before we wrap up here: Are there any
hints about what's coming with Mixer itself that you can talk
about? This is always a fun question, I love asking it.

JENN MCCOY: Yeah. I'd say a couple
things. I mean, one, actually, that UI refresh that will be
coming to the whole Mixer user base later this summer, that's a big
investment for us. We're super excited about that.

I do think you will continue to see us adding and innovating to
our Hype Zone experiences. We added the Realm Royale
experience this week as a partnership with Hi-Rez Studios, and
that's been a lot of fun. And we will continue to think
about, like, how do we optimize and grow that Hype Zone
experience? What else?

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah. We've been doing
some interesting things to really try to present e-sports in a new
ways. So with SMITE, we've been presenting that with some of
our co-stream features, and we just deployed I think at the
one-year anniversary, a new interactive dashboard that shows
real-time stats from the SMITE e-sports league.

And so the general area of e-sports, we also think is an area
where we can change it a lot. When I go to an e-sports event
and I see the energy of the crowd and the people cheering, and then
when I watch it online, there's a lot of energy we can bring to the
Mixer experience. We're doing a lot more of that in the years
to come.

And generally, with Mixplay, you're going to see in the coming
months a much larger volume of unique Mixplay experiences.
And, frankly, knowing about the portfolio of what's coming, it's
super diverse. That's probably the most exciting part about
it. A bunch of developers doing some really, really
interesting, creative things, which I think is going to surprise a
lot of people.

JASON HOWARD: So a little bit of teasing
without too much detail, but hey, you know? I'll take what I
can get here.

So, obviously, Mixer being mixer.com, getting started seems
pretty simple, right? Webcam and a mic and game on whatever
platform you decide to stream on. It's pretty easy to connect
those dots, there's lots of helps and how-to online. The
entire community is there to do some support. Anything that
I'm missing here?

CHAD GIBSON: Well, for people who want to
stream, we made it really easy with Windows with the Game
Bar. So Windows Game Bar, you can stream to Mixer pretty
easily. And in Xbox, it's all integrated into the guide to
stream to Mixer. So for users who want to start sharing and
streaming, those are phenomenal ways to get going.

And then on your phone, you can download Mixer Create and start
streaming on your phone as well. And we have viewing
experiences on Xbox One, we have a great Web experience for the
desktop, we have mobile viewing experiences on iOS Android, so
we're going to continue to offer great viewing and streaming
experiences across all of those devices.

JASON HOWARD: Beautiful. Any
parting wisdom for our listeners?

JENN MCCOY: I would just encourage
everyone, you know, whether you want to just share your game play
with friends or if you actually want to take that first step
towards building an audience, try it out, have fun with it because
so much about streaming on Mixer is bringing your personality to
the table, and we're obviously very focused on gaming, but we have
streamers that do all kinds of different creative things. We
have folks that are artists, we have musicians, we have people that
do cooking shows. So it really is just an amazing platform to
show your creativity and to connect with people who care about what
you care about.

CHAD GIBSON: One thing I would suggest is
when you start viewing a Mixer stream for the first time, you know,
find a game you play or browse around a stream that's interesting
to you and just say hi. I think that first moment where you
say hi and you know the streamer will probably say something back
and you start just joining a community and engaging, that's where
you experience the really, really fun part of Mixer.

JASON HOWARD: Awesome. Well, Jenn,
Chad, it's been fantastic chatting with you. Thank you both
so much both for being here to speak with us today, but as well as,
you know, the work you do day in and day out to help make this
platform the success it's become. And I say that both as a
viewer of Mixer itself as well as a user of the platform. So
big thanks to you and the rest of the team that supports you guys
day in and day out.

JENN MCCOY: Thanks for having us.

CHAD GIBSON: Thank you.

JENN MCCOY: It's been a lot of fun, and
we're excited to just continue to grow the service.

CHAD GIBSON: Yeah, thank you.

JASON HOWARD: The Windows Insider team,
including yours truly, was on the ground at E3 and hosted a special
happy hour for our Insiders.

We caught up with a few Insiders over drinks, and got their
impression on what's exciting about the future of gaming.
Here's Tyler Ahn at E3.

TYLER AHN: The Insider team had a blast
at E3 this year. We caught up with some Insiders at our
awesome E3 happy hour to get their take-aways from this epic
event.

Hi! how are you? Please introduce yourself and a sentence
on what you're working on.

TYLER AHN: Fantastic. We're so
happy to have you here. What gets you most excited when you
think about the future of gaming?

HOLLY AMOS: I've actually noticed that
there's a lot of storytelling, and it's like 50 percent almost like
you're in a movie, and then 50 percent actual game play. And
I think based on the fact that I grew up with stuff like, you know,
Super Mario Bros, where you were just trying to beat a
level, the story aspect is really interesting to me.

TYLER AHN: Hi, who are you? Please
introduce yourself and a sentence on what you're working
on.

MAX DINK: Oh, hi. My name is Max
Dink. Currently, I am working on a custom metal wallet for
card holding. I'm an engineer, so that's what I do.

TYLER AHN: So why did you want to join us
at E3 this year?

MAX DINK: Well, I wanted to be part of,
you know, the convention, you know, Windows Insider Program is
nice, they brought me out here. And you know, get to see new
games. New games. A lot of new games.
(Laughter.)

TYLER AHN: There were a lot of new games
today. So when you think about the future of gaming, what
gets you most excited?

MAX DINK: Definitely VR because almost
everyone is having VR now. And definitely AI for computers
and just you know when you play a game, AI is better than just
pre-programmed actions.

TYLER AHN: Hello, who are you?
Please introduce yourself and tell me what you're working
on.

JENNIFER KING: Hi, my name is Jennifer
King, and currently I'm working toward my software engineering
degree, master's degree, at Cal State Fullerton.

TYLER AHN: Fantastic,
congratulations.

JENNIFER KING: Thank you.

TYLER AHN: So what brings you to E3 this
year?

JENNIFER KING: We were invited by Windows
Insider and this is our third consecutive year now, thank you so
much for bringing us out here.

TYLER AHN: What gets you most excited
when you think about the future of gaming?

JENNIFER KING: I think the community is
definitely something that gets me really excited about gaming
because you can interact with other people and you can play games
with other people, connect with them, and then even meet them in
real life.

SONYA SATURDAY: My name is Sonya
Saturday, I'm a cartoonist. I am currently working on a
coloring book called Socially Conscious White
Ladies. And my website is sonyasaturday.com.

TYLER AHN: Fantastic. So what
brings you to E3 this year?

SONYA SATURDAY: The Windows Insider
Program brought me to E3 this year, and I'm very appreciative of
everything they're doing.

TYLER AHN: What gets you most excited
when you think about the future of gaming?

SONYA SATURDAY: I'm really excited about
the future of storytelling potential with games, about making
something more realistic and interactive, something that's more
like film and true life.

TYLER AHN: Hi! Who are you?
Please introduce yourself and tell me what you're working on.

HARMONY VAN LUVEN: Hey, Tyler. My
name's Harmony Van Luven. I'm the creative director of Frolic
Games. And right now, I'm working on learning improving, and
currently focusing on a website that sells video game accessories
to women.

TYLER AHN: Awesome, I like that
niche. So what brings you to E3 this year?

HARMONY VAN LUVEN: I was invited by the
Windows Insider Program. I'm looking forward to just talking
with everybody and learning all of the amazing things that are new
and I guess released -- and Halo 6 or the next
Halo.

TYLER AHN: What gets you most excited
when you think about the future of gaming?

HARMONY VAN LUVEN: We're finally at that
crossroads where -- we're at that crossroads where graphics are
becoming hyper-realistic, so much so that now, finally, the
suspension of disbelief can be -- it feels like you're actually
there and it's you.

TYLER AHN: Games becoming real.
Super real.

HARMONY VAN LUVEN: Super real.

JASON HOWARD: That's it for Episode
16. Get next month's episode automatically by subscribing on
your favorite podcast app. You can also find all of our
awesome past episodes on the Windows Insider website at
insider.windows.com.

And if you're not an Insider yet, it's easy and free to sign up
and join the global community shaping the future of
Windows.

Thanks for listening to the Windows Insider Podcast,
I'm your host, Jason Howard. Until next time.

NARRATION: The Windows Insider Podcast is
produced by Microsoft Production Studios and the Windows Insider
team, which includes Tyler Ahn -- that's me -- Michelle Paison,
Ande Harwood, and Kristie Wang.

Visit us on the Web at insider.windows.com. Follow
@windowsinsider on Instagram and Twitter.

Support for the Windows Insider Podcast comes from Microsoft --
empowering every person and every organization on the planet to
achieve more.

Please subscribe, rate, and review this podcast wherever you get
your podcasts.

Moral support and inspiration come from Ninja Cat, reminding us
to have fun and pursue our passions.